The Play's the Thing
by Halfpint Fountainpen
Summary: In another Small College Town, USA, the drama department is reeling from the apparent suicide of one of its most promising members. With the help of the victim's closest friend on campus (OC Lily Thanes), the Winchesters discover that there's more magic in Shakespeare than they could have ever imagined.
1. Chapter 1

_**Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural but it owns my soul many times over at this point._

 _**Timeline: Season 4, in between "Heaven and Hell (4.10)" and "Family Remains (4.11)" - one of the jobs that the Winchesters did in the month in between the canon episodes._

* * *

 **Chapter One**

Normal people wouldn't probably find a pub conducive to researching and writing, but for Lillian Thanes it was perfect. She'd started coming to the Green Flag as an undergraduate, and five years later she was still coming here most nights of the week as she slogged her way through a master's degree. It was one of the quieter pubs near her university. Small and offering only the most basic rail and menu, the Flag lacked what other college bars in the area had in abundance: attractiveness to loud, obnoxious crowds drawn out from the fraternity and sorority houses.

The fact that it was still in full operation was only described as "the luck of the Irish" by the very Irish owners as well as almost their entire bar staff. In reality the Donnelley family was rather well-off, having come a long way from their Famine-fleeing roots by rebuilding their lives on a farm far more prosperous than their meagre rocky acre in the west of Ireland. Curious to see if they could make a go of the pub, Gerry and Ellie Donnelley had bought it a year or two before Lily had started going there to study after a long day of classes. Their oldest son Liam managed the place, having a better head for business than for farming, and was able to turn a modest profit from what the rest of his family considered a sideline distraction. There were always people inside but aside from the usual drinking holidays the Flag was never at full capacity. That was why Lily had become part of the woodwork there, as familiar a face at the bar as those behind it.

The other reason Lily loved going there was the food – which she, as a longtime regular and friend of the staff, got at a significant discount. The fact that Liam used some of the family farm's bounty on the menu put the Flag's pub fare way above the average quality and way below the average price in the college town. The meals Lily ate there were better than her home-cooked fare and were surpassed only by the Sunday lunch she still shared with her parents and siblings every week. But Lily preferred the pub's easy, laid-back atmosphere to the dysfunctional tension of her childhood home.

This evening at the Flag had started like most, though a big difference was that there was hardly anyone else at the Flag besides herself and the evening bartender, Michael; in fact, there were only two occupied tables when she walked in, and one group had left since then. Michael was even flying solo in the pub, having sent the server home early. After a day of classes – two in which she was the student in the morning, and one in the afternoon that she taught once a week – around seven she'd locked up the small office that she shared with two other teaching assistants in the history department and headed three blocks off campus to the Flag. By the time she'd settled into her usual spot at the end of the bar, Michael had poured her a pint of Guinness for her to start on while she chose between her three usual pub meals. It was now eight and Lily had just finished the last of the lamb stew, and as she set the empty bowl aside her mind was already back on her research.

She'd earned her undergraduate degree as a double major honors student in history and literature, and her honors thesis explored the historical contexts of literature. Her master's thesis looked forwards instead of backwards, though: she was scrutinizing literary works with the eyes of modernity, challenging the status of so-called "classics" and their relevance to the current century by assessing how they measured up to current standards across the board of modern life. Lily was currently slogging through research for her chapter on the women in Shakespearean tragedies.

It was far better than the chapter where she'd explored the concepts and portrayals of familial units in Greek and Roman mythology, but Lily was feeling her academic stamina begin to wane. She was hardly a full year into her graduate studies yet she was already questioning why she'd gone into this in the first place right after earning her bachelor's degree.

Lily frowned at that thought and pushed it aside. Whatever kind of slump she was in right now, she was sure it was temporary. She _loved_ learning and she loved what she was working on, and what was more important was that she'd committed herself to another degree. And all of that put together added up to the conclusion that she had to finish what she'd started.

Besides, at a time like this it would be nice to have her research and writing filling her mind more than it usually did. Lily wanted to be so totally preoccupied with her thesis that she couldn't think about the tragedy currently rocking the entire campus – the suicide two weeks earlier of one of the teaching assistants in the dramatic performance department of Fine Arts. And if that wasn't enough, ever since then the entire program had been bombarded with all kinds of problems.

Those other problems didn't really register on Lily's radar, though. Lily had known Adrian ever since being in a group project with him in an Elizabethan literature course in the first year of her undergraduate degree. He'd taken the class as an elective that complimented his degree in dramatic arts and they had remained friends long after the excuse of being study buddies had become a thing of the past. She still couldn't believe that he was gone – that he'd committed suicide, because he had never given any indication and she had never noticed anything…and Lily needed a distraction big enough to keep herself from focusing on the indignation and hurt she felt over having been one of Adrian's best friends and not knowing – not having been smart enough to know – what his life had truly been like.

Funnily enough, reading Shakespeare didn't cause her to go down the block of memory lane where Adrian resided. He'd been as enamored of the Bard as any fanboy could be, and Lily had always taken great amusement in teasing her friend about the bromance he had with the long-dead playwright. She was so engrossed in yet another reading of _Macbeth_ – a week into this chapter and she'd already lost count of how many times she'd gone from Line 1 to Line 2113 – that she hardly noticed the two men walk into the mostly-empty pub.

* * *

Sam and Dean Winchester sat down at a table in the corner of the pub, tired as always from the long ordeal of driving from one version of Small Town, USA, to another. Lately they'd been at it non-stop, and Sam had suspected for about a week now that it had something to do with the confession Dean had made to him not so long ago about his time in Hell.

In the week and a half since then they'd done four jobs. It had all been small stuff and straightforward at that – the supernatural hunters' equivalent of skeet shooting while stalking deer – but still, they'd gone from one job to another without so much as a day's break in between. As concerned as Sam was starting to become, though, he knew better than to ask Dean about it. It wasn't quite yet the time for him to broach that particularly sensitive topic with his older brother.

Instead, Sam had decided to humor Dean for a while longer. "So, what are we doing here? You didn't exactly say where we were heading when we left that cemetery." In fact, the brothers had barely finished reburying the coffin whose contents they'd set ablaze before Dean was burning rubber to get them here.

Sam didn't even know how Dean had found the time to track down a new job, but that too wasn't something he wanted to ask about just yet. If Dean needed to run himself into the ground to deal with his issues, then so be it. Sam just hoped that he himself had the stamina to keep up at the demanding pace Dean was setting.

Dean plucked the bar's menu – one laminated page – from where it was propped up on the table between the condiments. "So about two weeks ago, a graduate student offed himself in his office. He was a teaching assistant in the undergraduate theatre program or something. Anyway, so he commits suicide, and right after the funeral weird things start happening in the department." Dean handed the menu across the table and settled back in his chair.

"Okay, so an easy hunt then," Sam surmised as he studied the menu. "Sounds like a textbook haunting to me."

"Ah, but that's where you're wrong," Dean replied, then he glanced over Sam's shoulder. Sam turned around to see the bartender heading over, then looked back at the menu one last time.

"Good evening, gents," the bartender said. "Can I start you off with something to drink?"

"I think we're actually ready to order," Dean told him.

"Great. What'll it be?"

After taking their order – steak and fries with a pint of lager for Dean and chicken pot pie accompanied by cider for Sam – the bartender left and disappeared into the kitchen, and Dean got right back into his explanation.

"The guy was cremated, so there are no remains left to dig up, salt, and burn," he continued in a low, hushed voice.

"So we find whatever object he's attached to and do the deed on that," Sam said. "Again, no biggie."

The bartender came back with their drinks and retreated. Dean observed his familiar, casual interaction with the brunette sitting at the end of the bar with vague interest, then shrugged it off and got back to the issue at hand as Sam took a sip of his cider.

"The guy's been dead for two weeks, Sammy," he reminded his brother. "The kind of stuff that's happening…man, it would take some major ghost power to swing it. Too much power for a spirit that's two weeks old, that's for sure."

Sam's brows knitted in a frown. "That's not normal."

"Exactly." Dean took a long swig of his lager then said, "So there's something making this guy's spirit more powerful than it should, which most definitely points towards something real and most likely still very much alive controlling it."

Sam set down his glass and rubbed his forehead. "Alright, then. Where do we start?"

* * *

When Lily finally looked up from her books, it was nine-thirty and another customer was standing at the bar, credit card in hand and waiting for Michael to get back from his bathroom break. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with tawny hair that he wore in what looked like an overgrown crew cut that complemented the tousled look to the rest of him: a few days' worth of stubble on his chiseled jaw, faded jeans and a rumpled green plaid shirt over a long-sleeved grey T-shirt, and well-worn heavy-duty boots.

He turned his head and looked at her and Lily felt her cheeks go hot. _Was I staring too much?_

"Odd place to study," the man remarked, nodding at her books and laptop.

"This place serves alcohol. The library doesn't," Lily replied.

His face creased momentarily into a thoughtful frown. "Good reason," he conceded.

"Well, like Hemingway said – 'write drunk, edit sober.'" Lily turned back to her books and ran her fingers over the numerous Post-Its sticking out of her copy of _Macbeth._

"Is it midterms already?" the guy asked.

 _What the heck is Michael doing in there_? Lily was a terribly private person and she felt like she was being put on the spot. "I'm a graduate student," she replied simply.

"In…drama?" he asked, his voice carrying an obvious hint of a little too much interest for Lily's comfort.

Lily drew in a breath and glanced sidelong at him. "Literature and history."

Thankfully Michael reappeared then and the man's attention was diverted from her to the action of settling up his tab. Lily glanced around the pub then, noting that the other customers who had been there before her were still there and halfway through another round, and that at a table in the farthest corner from the bar another man was getting up and putting on his jacket.

"Thanks," the guy at the bar said to Michael. "Have a good night." He looked at Lily as he pocketed his wallet. "You too," he added before turning around and walking to the door, where he was joined by the man Lily had observed putting on his jacket.

They left without a backwards glance – _but then again, why would they?_ This was a college town, a stop on the road towards somewhere else for anyone whose life wasn't tied somehow to the institution on the hillsides above the houses and shops. They'd be gone in the morning, and Lily briefly wondered why she even cared before getting back to her books.

* * *

"We'll hit up the campus tomorrow and see what else we can dig up whatever the local police missed," Sam said as the brothers entered their motel room.

"We can probably split up," Dean suggested, dumping his duffel bag on the floor by the bed closest to the door and frowning at an odd, dingy spot just off-center on the duvet.

 _Gross…_ Dean stretched before tugging the duvet off the bed and rolling it up. _No way am I sleeping on that._ Even for him it was just a little much.

"We'd cover way more ground faster," he continued, "if one of us does the asking around while the other goes snooping. There've been a couple of places where the weird ghost crap's been happening, right? Maybe there'll be some clues there."

Sam nodded his assent, setting his laptop bag down on the round table in the kitchenette and looking around the room. He didn't really take notice of how motel rooms actually looked anymore, unless they were particularly tacky or skeevy; he was just committing to memory all the possible escape routes available to them here. "Sounds like a plan to me."

* * *

The next morning, the brothers flipped a quarter to determine who would be scouring the crime scene and who would be canvassing the drama students and faculty.

Shortly after Sam took off in the direction of the crime scene, Dean started his interviews. He was currently on his fourth – seemingly another dead-ender – and his patience was wearing thin.

"What else can I say, man?" the dreadlocked thespian said, shrugging the bony shoulders sticking out of his cut-off lumberjack shirt. "The guy just offed himself, ya know?"

"Yes, I understand that," Dean replied, "but was there anything – _anything_ at all that could have indicated he had those tendencies?"

The thin shoulders went up and down again, and the dreadlocks quivered as he shook his head. "I dunno, man. We're all kinda…moody, I guess, and Adrian was just like the rest of us. It's an artist thing, ya know?" He raised his chin proudly, as if to indicate that Sam and Dean couldn't possibly understand the plight of truly artistic souls.

Dean sighed inwardly. "Sure. Okay, then. Well, do you know if there's anyone outside of the drama department that we could talk to about him? Friends, family, people like that?"

"Not really, man." The pierced nostrils flared as he cocked his ragged-looking head to one side in thought. "Well, there was this one chick, ya know? Over in the history department, I guess, man. I think she's a TA or something, man. Lily, I think? Yeah."

 _Finally – something useful._ He had one more question and said, "Okay, great. Could you point us there?"

"I dunno, man. I'm not in history, ya know?"

* * *

Lily sat at her desk in the slightly-too-small office she shared with two other teaching assistants in the history department, her copy of _Hamlet_ open before her and a pen between her teeth. Her five-subject notebook was open to a fresh page in the section she'd devoted to this play, the bright orange streak of highlighter at the top reminding her of what her train of thought for today should be: _Hamlet's Psychology._

Unwilling to put up with the incessant gossip of her companions, Lily had plugged in almost immediately upon settling down two hours before. There was no other way to be remotely productive there during her office hours three days a week. With the amount of work she had to do she really couldn't afford to spend any spare moments on anything but her studies.

A tap on her shoulder made her jump in a mile out of her chair. She yanked her earbuds out and twisted her upper body around, her bright brown eyes wide and flashing. "Cassie!" she exclaimed in exasperation. "How many times have I told you to come around the front when I'm plugged in?"

Cassie shrugged apologetically, though the bland expression on her face made the gesture obviously half-hearted. "There's somebody here who wants to see you," she said, gesturing over her shoulder at the door.

Lily looked past Cassie and saw a familiar figure hovering at the threshold – the guy from the Flag the night before, though decidedly less scruffy-looking today than he had been the previous evening. He was dressed in a black suit, white shirt, and tie, with his face smooth and his hair neatly combed.

 _He looked better last night,_ Lily thought. She then shook herself mentally back to the real issue – _something strange is happening here. He asked last night if I was in drama…he's got to be here about Adrian._

Lily tossed her earbuds onto the desk as she stood and turned around entirely.

"Hello," she said uncertainly, one eyebrow arched slightly as she regarded him. "Are you here for office hours, or…?"

"Oh, no. I'm not a student." He pulled a badge out of a pocket inside his black blazer and flashed it at her. She saw the bold "FBI" printed on it before he flicked it shut and could feel the heat of her colleagues' stares on her.

"Let's take this outside," Lily suggested pleasantly, gesturing for him to move out into the hall. She shut the door behind her and led him down to the department's reading room, which was thankfully empty.

"You approached me at the pub last night and asked if I was in the drama program, and now here you are again," she stated bluntly once the door was shut and they were sitting down across from each other at one of the room's small tables. "What's this about?"

* * *

Sam was stalking around one of the college's three theatres, the one where Adrian's thesis supervisor taught. It was the smallest of the three and located in one of the greener corners of campus. The building was actually an old church and the university, to help conserve the building, had bought up the acres it stood upon and converted the church and rectory into a theatre and offices for the classical drama program.

He was backstage now, on the same level as the stage just behind the rigs used to change background scenery. So far, he hadn't seen anything out of the ordinary – no sulfur, no symbols scratched in secret places, no hex bags tucked in dark corners. As far as he could tell, the place was clean. But Sam hadn't yet gone up into the rafters, and if the news and police and coroner's reports were anything to go by then that had to yield something. Even the most miniscule clue didn't really stand much of a chance of evading his keen gaze.

The guy had hanged himself from the rafters above center stage just a few feet behind the red curtain – gruesomely dramatic, in not only Sam's opinion but also that of everyone else who'd seen it before the coroner had gotten him down. Sam had seen death scenes a lot worse than a body dangling off the end of a rope, but it never failed to strike an emotional reaction – no matter how small – inside him. Loss of life, no matter what its circumstances, was something he and Dean were committed to minimizing. Wasn't that why they were still hunting?

Sam headed up to the rafters, his sharp eyes scanning his surroundings on his ascent. _Still nothing yet,_ he thought with a slight frown. He didn't want to back to Dean empty-handed, though, and started making his rounds of the rafters.

* * *

"Adrian wasn't walking on sunshine all the time, but I never pegged him for being depressed and suicidal," Lily said mechanically. "I told that to the local police already though – surely you saw that in the file?"

"Of course I did," Dean replied smoothly, not even batting an eye at the question, "though I just like to be thorough with my own records."

 _Fair enough, I guess,_ Lily thought, but out loud she queried, "But why is the FBI on this case, anyway? Since when was suicide –"

"A federal issue?" Dean supplied, cutting her off. Lily, somewhat indignant at being interrupted, nodded with a barely-discernable frown beginning to knit between her eyebrows. "That's classified, Miss Thanes."

"Lily. Please, call me Lily." It was an automated request and she was back on the bone of the feds showing up to investigate Adrian's death two weeks after the local police had already supposedly wrapped it up. "Look, he was just…a small-town guy who moved to another small town to go to college. He liked it here enough to stay on for graduate studies and his department liked him enough to hire him on as a TA, give him a grant, and put on his own plays from time to time." She shrugged helplessly. "We were close friends – best friends, even, and I don't recall him ever getting caught up in anything…not even something that could be classified as 'petty.'"

Dean was scribbling on his notepad and keeping up with her character reference of the victim, but he paused when she briefly touched upon Adrian Dawes' history at the university. "Could you elaborate on what you said just now about his track record here?" he asked.

Lily looked at him, surprise visible on her face – _a sweet one, no doubt about that,_ Dean thought now that he saw her in daylight – and she settled back in her chair, seemingly taken aback enough to need some time to collect her thoughts on the subject.

"From the beginning, if you can," Dean prompted.

Lily glanced out the window and when she spoke, her voice was very soft and had a note of fondness to it. "We met in first year," she began. "We had a literature class together – Elizabethan literature, which turned out to be pretty much just one long 'intro to Shakespeare' the way our prof taught it. Adrian was taking it to compliment his courses in classical drama. We stayed friends after the semester ended and we graduated together four years later. He was really…" She paused, searching for the right words to describe the Adrian _she_ had known, not the one that he'd apparently been hiding from her. "…he was an amazing person, a good friend, and an even better actor. He was winning big roles almost right from the beginning."

"Define 'big,'" Dean requested.

"First- and second-year students _never_ get speaking parts," Lily explained, "but he was scooping up first billing roles as soon as he started auditioning at the beginning of second year."

 _That's kind of interesting._ Dean nodded in understanding. "So…he was a prodigy?"

"Something like that, yeah." Lily's face took on a wistful expression. "It was quite extraordinary, watching him perform. I knew him better than anyone – well, I thought I did – and _I_ couldn't even tell where he stopped and, say, Hamlet started."

"Did he ever play in…oh, I don't know… _Macbeth_?"

Lily shook her head, causing her dark brown ponytail to swing back and forth behind her. "Adrian was always trying to get that one put on the playbill, but it hasn't been done here for a couple of decades now," she told him. "The last time they performed it, somebody _died._ "

Dean raised an eyebrow and Lily continued, "I mean, I know there's the whole, 'Oh-em-gee, this play is cursed' thing around _Macbeth_ , but this was apparently a full-blown disaster. They had an elaborate rig set up and it just…collapsed above the stage."

"What was this rig supposed to do exactly, and why was it so high up?"

"It was made to look like an earthen pathway, I think – like the kind you'd find in a cave? At the beginning of Act Four, Macbeth goes into a cavern to meet the Weird Sisters," Lily explained. "The director wanted to show Macbeth walking down into the cavern as the Weird Sisters cast a spell, and the set designer came up with this rig that could be lowered down from the rafters." She held her hands up, a small distance apart, and demonstrated the movement. "One end would be lowered down first, then the opposite end would go down a bit farther…and the rig could also turn slightly – not a full rotation, but enough so that it didn't look like he was going down a set of stairs as seen from the side."

Dean grimaced. "That sounds dangerous even without some rumored stage curse," he remarked.

"Yeah, well…it's drama, right?" Lily said wryly.

"So this rig just broke way up there above the stage?"

She nodded. "The actor playing Macbeth died, and the three playing the witches were all gravely injured. One was paralyzed, I think." She sighed sadly. "All on opening night, too."

"Jeez."

* * *

Sam's cellphone buzzed in his pocket and he retrieved it. The reception wasn't all that great up in the rafters but he could still hear Dean through the faint crackle of static.

"Found anything yet, Sammy?"

"Nope," Sam replied with a sigh. He was standing on the rear rafters, facing the empty seats from high above the stage over the tops of the red velvet curtains.

"Well, I just found out from a friend of Adrian's that a performance of _Macbeth_ a few decades back went deadly wrong – literally," Dean informed him, "and that Adrian was always gunning for the school to perform it again."

Sam frowned into the phone. "Did he ever succeed in getting it on the playbill?"

"Nope. But his friend thinks that he wouldn't have ever given up on it as long as he was at this college," replied Dean. "Have you checked out his office yet?"

"I was just about to – but hey, what exactly happened the last time the play was on?"

Dean relayed the story as Lily had told it, and Sam groaned. "Dude, that's terrible."

"No kidding. Look, Sammy, I'll head across campus now and meet you outside his office, yeah?"

"Sounds good."

* * *

Dean was there about ten minutes later, during which time Sam had used his FBI badge to persuade the head of the drama department to open up Adrian's office. Sam was already inside when Dean arrived, but he hadn't yet touched anything – he was merely standing just inside the threshold when Dean showed up.

"Nothing out of the ordinary so far," Sam said, sensing Dean behind him. He sidestepped so Dean could enter unobstructed and shrugged his broad shoulders, his brow knitted tightly as he scanned the room yet again.

Dean also scanned the room through slightly narrowed eyes and then made his way over to the desk by the window. "So that stage accident that happened twenty years ago apparently happened during some incantation or spell-working scene," he told Sam as he looked over the various items strewn across the victim's desktop.

" _Double, double, toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble,"_ Sam quoted.

"Yeah, that's the one." Lily had quoted the same lines – and then some – back in her own office in the history department. "She also mentioned that Adrian Dawes was something of a legend around here."

"Define 'legend' for me?"

"Super talented, well-liked, and getting speaking parts when nobody else in his year was even allowed to audition for them, apparently." He looked over his shoulder at Sam. "Do you think maybe he had some kind of deal going?"

Sam pursed his lips in thought as he glanced over the titles on the bookshelf across the small office. "Maybe, but it hasn't been ten years since then," he replied, "so it wouldn't have been a crossroads deal…plus, he hanged himself – he wasn't found holed up somewhere shredded to bits."

"Which leaves witchcraft, then," Dean sighed with a shudder. "Either he was casting spells himself or he found somebody to do it for him."

"Well, either way…"

"Yeah. If he was a totally normal human guy swinging some mojo while flying solo, then some demon on the other end probably decided it was time to rake in his soul," Dean said.

"And if it wasn't him casting the spells, then perhaps whoever _was_ doing it decided they'd had enough," Sam continued.

"So, potential murder made to look like a suicide, and carried out by a witch who's got the juice to swing the universe in this guy's favor for years on end?" Dean blew a low whistle. "That doesn't sound messy and complicated at all."

Sam's frown deepened. "Did his friend happen to mention what his thesis was about?"

"Lily said it had to do with method acting – that whole 'become the character in your real life' deal or however it goes."

Sam turned around to face Dean. "And she said he was really bent on getting _Macbeth_ onstage again, didn't she?"

"Practically obsessed with it, yeah." Dean tried the top drawer of the desk and found it locked. "Well, well – what are we hiding here?" He crouched down and removed his lock pick from his back pocket.

The simple desk lock was pathetically easy to open and Dean pulled the top drawer open. Nothing out of the ordinary – pens, paperclips, stapler, Post-It notes. The second drawer was full of chocolate bars and packages of cookies. "Guy sure had a sweet tooth," he remarked.

Sam crossed the room to stand by the desk as Dean opened the third drawer. Like most typical office desks the bottom drawer was the biggest, having been designed to hold a hanging-folder system. When Dean opened it though, there weren't any hanging folders inside.

Dean gave another low whistle. "Holy crap," he said in a hushed voice. He reached into the drawer cautiously and drew out a large wooden box. It was entirely inlaid with different kinds of wood to create an intricate pattern of Celtic knots and animal motifs.

"Any way to open it?" Sam asked as Dean handed it up.

"Check it," Dean responded, his attention already back to the remaining contents of the drawer.

In a few short moments the drawer's contents were laid out on a clear space in the middle of the desk: the box, which Sam had opened to reveal a small store of various spell components arranged on a removable tray that, when taken out, revealed a heavy pewter bowl and a mortar-and-pestle in the bottom compartment; a leather-bound spell book; a dark green cloth, folded into a tight square and bound with black braided cord; a bundle of slender tapers in various colors tied up with another black cord; and a large ceremonial knife in an embossed leather sheath.

"There's enough in here to point towards a heavy-hitter," Sam remarked.

"But why would a witch with that much juice settle for stardom in a middle-of-nowhere college theatre program?" Dean wondered.

"I don't think he _was_ a full-on witch, Dean," Sam said. "I think he was a normal guy who got in way over his head. When again did Lily say he started standing out in his program?"

"The beginning of second year, I think." Dean shook his head sadly as something else Lily had mentioned came to the forefront of his mind. "She met him in first year in an Elizabethan literature class. She said he was taking it to get a more well-rounded education in drama."

Sam sighed. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" he asked.

"If you're thinking that this guy got it into his head to dick around with some spells in _Macbeth_ to see if they worked, then yeah – I am." Dean snorted in disgust and exasperation. "Humans, dude – what the hell is wrong with us sometimes?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

"You know what else is weird?" Sam said as the brothers stood side-by-side in front of the desk, staring fixedly at the items before them. "It's been two weeks since this guy died. Why is all of his stuff still here?"

Dean actually did have an answer for that. "According to Lily his parents did come down to pack up his apartment after the funeral, but they didn't want to linger long and only took his personal effects. His department volunteered to handle all of this – " he made a sweeping gesture around the room with one hand " – and his parents asked her if she'd take care of getting his apartment cleared out."

"That's a pretty hefty burden on a friend."

Dean shrugged. "She said it wasn't all that bad. He rented out a furnished studio in town and he didn't have too much to box up."

"Did she keep anything?"

"She said whatever she didn't throw out is in her basement."

* * *

Lily's phone buzzed on top of her pad of yellow legal paper and she looked at it, mildly annoyed. After her interview with the FBI agent – who had introduced himself as Bruce Dickinson, to Lily's amusement – she had been subjected to an altogether different kind of grilling at the hands of Cassie and Liz. She had only just gotten back into a good groove over her studies but when she saw the number on the phone and recognized it as the same one on the card Agent Dickinson had given her in exchange for her info, she took the call.

"Hello?"

"Uh, yeah – Lily? Agent Dickinson here."

"Can I help you with something?"

"Yeah, actually. Remember how you told me you've got some of Adrian's stuff in your basement?"

"Yes. Whatever I didn't throw out, I boxed up."

"Right. Well…I need to take a look at his personal effects."

* * *

On a daily basis Lily parked her car in the small lot behind the Green Flag and walked the three blocks from town to the college campus. Though she was on the university payroll as a TA, the terms of her contract didn't extend to free prime parking on campus – and besides, Lily enjoyed the walk after her half-hour drive from beyond the other side of town.

The plan was to meet Agent Dickinson and his partner at her car, and so Lily was currently leaning against her 1974 Matador. She loved the car for more than its high "badass" factor – Adrian had jokingly referred to it as her Batmobile, even though the Matador was famous for having been a Bond car. The Matador had once been her uncle's pride and joy, and he had given it to her along with his house. The circumstances under which she had received these immense presents were somber: in mid-July he died while camping during his last big road trip and the tow truck hauling the Matador had rolled into town behind the van bringing his body home and the local sheriff.

" _It was a bit unusual," Sheriff Anderson said with his hat in one hand while the other scratched his head, as though the mere recollection was enough to bring his initial puzzlement to the forefront of his mind. "I mean, it's not often that somebody travels around with a fully notarized copy of their will in their jacket pocket._ "

But Uncle Pete had been an unusual character, all in all. He'd lived on a few acres beyond the town and the car shed out back had always been locked up and battened down as though Uncle Pete perpetually expected a hurricane to tear through New England. Once, when Lily was about ten or so and staying overnight for some uncle-and-niece bonding time, she had gone into a closet that was normally always locked and had found inside it a small gun rack loaded with shotguns and hunting rifles along with a small chest of drawers. The top compartment was stuffed full of old red maps covered in bright red symbols and shorthand, and a locked metal cash box that was heavy and, when shaken, evidently contained things that both rustled and clinked. At that point, Uncle Pete had caught her, and after hauling her away from the closet he had locked it up – and it had stayed that way right up to his death.

On another occasion some years later – a few months before that last trip out, actually – she had been helping him out while he rested a broken arm and found numerous boxes of shotgun shells stashed in the very back of his pantry next to several large canisters of kosher salt. While a closet of guns wasn't so terribly weird in rural America, Lily's curiosity goaded her into asking Uncle Pete why he kept the ammo so far from his guns. His gruff response was that even if he didn't have any kids of his own, his nieces and nephews deserved to be safe whenever they set foot in his house.

It was then that Lily had remembered that the one rule he had in his house was that if a door opened, you were welcome to use whatever you found there; if a door was locked, under no circumstances were you to even try opening it. Even now – almost two months since she'd moved onto the property – she hadn't yet gone into the car shed or unlocked that closet door. Funnily, the thought of doing either hadn't even occurred to her.

The rumbling purr of an engine brought Lily quickly out of her memories and she looked up from her hands to see a low-riding black muscle car pulling into the lot. On sight Lily knew it was a Chevy Impala – _late Sixties,_ she figured.

 _And definitely not your standard-issue FBI vehicle,_ Lily thought when she recognized the driver as Agent Dickinson.

He pulled into a spot a few spaces down and cut the engine, and he and his partner got out. Lily had figured that Dickinson's partner was the guy she'd seen him with the night before and her guess was proven correct.

"Hey, Lily. Thanks for meeting us on such short notice," Dickinson said with a half-smile.

 _Damn, that look works on him,_ Lily couldn't help but think. She shrugged one shoulder in response, adding, "It's the least I can do, I guess." She paused as her doe-like eyes fell on his partner. "I'm Lilly," she said, straightening up out of her leaning pose against the Matador's hood and sticking out her hand.

"Agent Harris," he replied in kind.

 _Dickinson…Harris…that's funny. Like that time when..._

Like that time when she had overheard a message on his answering machine from somebody asking for a guy named "Christopher Lee." Uncle Pete had brushed it off as a wrong number, but later on she'd heard muffled snatches of a conversation and had picked up another house phone just in time to hear the person on the other end refer to Uncle Pete as "Chris."

... _and last night these two looked like they were the ones one some long-ass camping road trip…just like Uncle Pete used to when he got home from one of his trips._

Lily couldn't help it – her brain noticed details and strung them together in these kinds of thought processes all the time, and seemingly of its own accord. And suddenly all these guys were stirring up memories of her uncle for no apparent reason…and that in turn was making her gut clench.

Like Adrian, Lily had grown up in one middle-of-nowhere town and had exchanged it in her adulthood for a home in a "slightly-closer-to-civilization" one, but she wasn't some bumbling backwater bumpkin. Like her brain, her intuition often worked in overdrive.

In a flash her first conversation with Dickinson came back to her. After she'd told him about the disastrous production of Macbeth, he had asked her several questions about Adrian's behaviour in the weeks and days leading up to his death. He hadn't asked if Adrian had been exhibiting any indications of sudden depression or suicidal tendencies; he'd asked if Adrian had seemed paranoid or extremely anxious, and if he had ever mentioned anyone taking a grudge against him. At first she thought that maybe they suspected foul play, even though the local authorities had successfully ruled it out, but now that the conversation replayed in her head it only added to the vise-like grip around her guts.

She crossed her arms over her chest and said in an abrasive tone, "Did one of you bring a rancid tuna melt? Because I smell something fishy and started right when you two rolled up."

"…excuse me?" Harris asked, visibly taken aback. Dickinson's eyes narrowed, though, and he said nothing.

"You heard me." Lily's wide, doe-like eyes narrowed back at them as she added, addressing each in turn, "Bruce Dickinson, right? And I suppose your first name is Steve?" She shook her head. "I've been listening to Iron Maiden since I was a kid, guys. Now, I'm sure there are plenty of guys named Bruce Dickinson and Steve Harris running around, but the what are chances of two of them ending up as partners in the FBI? I'm getting some really strange vibes off of you two and I'm not sure I want to be letting you anywhere near my house, much less _inside_ it, until I can trust you."

They glanced at each other.

"The local cops didn't ask the same questions you guys are asking and they didn't go through the belongings in his house, either," Lily continued. "So why is it that you two are here two weeks after everything's already happened – including Adrian's funeral?"

They exchanged another glance and Lily realized that this kind of wordless communication was way too intimate for two professional partners. Even if they had been partners for long, Lily had the nagging suspicion that there was a bond much stronger than that between them.

She arched one eyebrow expectantly. "Well?"

"Maybe…maybe out in the open isn't the best place to talk about it," Harris suggested after a long stand-off of silence and hard looks.

"And neither is the pub," Dickinson added quickly.

"Can we just…drive back to your house with you and explain everything there?" Harris asked.

"Why, because it'll be safer?" Lily snapped in irritation. "What's so safe about letting two shady-ass suits follow me home?"

About five minutes and forty bucks later – from their wallets, not hers, and into Michael's gleeful palm – Lily ushered the pair into Liam's office above the pub and shut the door behind her.

"It's a good thing he's out for a few days," she told them. She brushed by the one who called himself "Bruce Dickinson" and turned, her arms crossing again over her chest as she leaned back against the desk. "Spill."

The taller one, "Harris," sighed and began, "Okay. You're right. We're not –"

" – not really named Bruce Dickinson and Steve Harris," finished his partner. "I'm Dean and this is Sam."

 _I'm still asking the question you're obviously trying to avoid._ "Okay. And are you FBI or not?"

"No," said Sam quietly after a moment.

"So why are you investigating my friend's suicide?" Lily demanded hotly.

Dean sighed. "Look, Lily, it's…it's complicated to explain, okay? And you might not even believe the truth."

"Try me," she challenged.

Another shared look – Lily was starting to get _really_ annoyed by that – and Sam said, "We think…we think Adrian was fooling around in the occult."

Lily gaped at him. "You're _joking_ , right? If so, this is in really poor taste. I have half a mind to call the Sheriff right now and–"

"Listen, sister, you wanted the truth and now we're giving it to you," Dean interjected. When a moment long enough to convince Dean that she had backed down for the time being had passed he went on, "Like Sam said, we think he was fooling around with some heavy-duty witchcraft. Yes, that stuff is real and yes, it is very dangerous. Regular people don't know what to look for but we do."

"All those things happening at the college ever since he died? We think they're all directly related to his death," Sam added.

"That's impossible." Lily shook her head to emphasize the statement, her dark brown ponytail swinging wildly behind her head.

"Only if you don't know that vengeful spirits are real," Dean said bluntly.

Lily blinked, then laughed. "Okay, guys. Good one," she scoffed. "Witches are real, you say? Yeah, okay – God knows there are a ton of religions out there and I'm not one to judge. But Adrian was a practicing Episcopalian, so I think you're barking up the wrong tree on that one. And evil ghosts?" She laughed derisively again and made a move to walk by them towards the door. "You're crazy."

"Lily –" began Dean, but she whirled around on her heel. Brown eyes flashing and angry, she glared at him so intensely that suddenly he was dumbstruck. And just as suddenly, she was gone and the door banged shut behind her.

* * *

"Vengeful spirits, my _ass_ ," Lily snarled under her breath as she yanked open the driver-side door of the Matador. "Of all the disrespectful and _cruel_ things you could possibly say to somebody who's lost a friend…"

She threw herself into the seat and slammed the door shut. Gripping the wheel so tight that her knuckles blanched and her keys stuck up between her fingers, Lily clenched her jaw and fought back tears.

It had only been two weeks. _Two goddamn weeks,_ and those two jackasses thought it was appropriate to pull shit like this? It was hardly ever appropriate, but there was such a thing as it being far too soon.

When she finally stopped hyperventilating, Lily's hands relaxed on the wheel and slowly slid off it to land limply in her lap. She hung her head and shut her eyes, but the action was too late to stop a few tears from running down her cheeks. After a moment she opened her eyes but kept them downcast so that she stared at her hands while she breathed in deeply three times.

The last exhalation came out in a puff of white air, and Lily was suddenly freezing…but it was lateen the afternoon in mid-October, and she had only needed a sweater that morning when she had left her house.

It got so cold in the car that a thin veneer of frost crackled across the windshield right before her brown eyes; already as wide and round as a doe's, now they were positively huge with confusion and fear.

"What the…"

A straight line appeared in the frost, first sliding down before turning sharply to the right for a bit and stopping. Another line appeared next to it, then a third in the same fashion as the first.

 _L…I…L…_

 _As_ the "Y" cut into the frost, Lily was already so frozen that wasn't sure if her blood had run cold - wasn't that supposed to happen in situations like this? – but she did know that this was too much for today. She grabbed the icy door handle and tried to open the door, but it wouldn't budge.

A sob choked out of her as she glanced back to her name on the windshield, and then a scream followed when she saw Adrian sitting next to her in the passenger seat.

She swiped at him instinctively with her free hand – the one holding her car keys – and he vanished in a literal puff of smoke.

It was suddenly warm again and the frost began to thaw. Her other hand was still clenched around the door handle and it suddenly worked again, and she practically fell sideways out of the car.

Lily scrambled to her feet as she simultaneously tried to run away from the car. Once she was standing squarely on the pavement a few steps away from the Matador, she saw Dean and Sam standing not too far away, both in a battle-ready stance with their guns drawn.

"You okay?" Sam asked her, lowering his gun.

"What the _hell_ just happened?" Lily sputtered. "What the _fu_ – "

"You finally going to hear what we have to say?" Dean demanded, cutting Lily off mid-sentence.

"Oh, you sure as _hell_ had better be ready to explain this," she fumed. She turned her look of utter disbelief back to her car. "Oh, God…I need a drink."

"Well, the good news is, we're still right behind the bar," said Sam optimistically, but Lily shook her head.

"After what happened just now I think I need something a little smoother and stronger than the stuff they've got," Lily explained. "You guys…you guys said you needed to check Adrian's stuff out, right? It's a bit of a drive but if you're going to go all that way…might as well have a drink while you're at it?"

Dean and Sam looked at each other and Sam shrugged.

"Al _right_ ," Dean crowed, always happy at the prospect of alcohol. "Nice wheels, by the way." Sam nodded his agreement at the latter, still somewhat concerned in the back of his mine at Dean's current and constant enthusiasm for the former.

"You too," Lily said. "And I'm glad you like mine, because I don't trust myself to drive right now."


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

 _He stands outside the sun. It's warm for an early October afternoon, but he can't feel it. He only knows it by seeing how the passersby are dressed. This used to be his favorite time of year, but not there are only two things occupying his mind._

 _The first is that he doesn't belong here – not anymore, anyway. If not for calendars, he wouldn't know the day. To him, time no longer has any meaning. Sometimes it feels like it's been forever; other times, only a second or two._

 _He can feel something pulling at him. It's visceral and throbs dully inside him. It's like something is grabbing him by the guts and using them to pull him somewhere. Sometimes when he looks at the way light dances on glass or water or dew, he can almost see a beam of light, brighter than the others, widen in front of him. But then he blinks and it's gone._

 _By now he ought to have been long gone, but there's something that forces him to remain rooted in this world._

 _It's keeping him here to pay back the time he stole._

* * *

Lily sat slumped in her seat at the well-worn kitchen table, staring for a long time at the fresh bottle of ten-year-old Bulleit she had cracked open about half an hour earlier. Sam and Dean had just finished telling her about why they were in town and what they had pieced together so far about Adrian's passing.

"Let me get this straight," she finally managed to say. "You guys…drive around the country hunting down urban legends and monsters in closets. And you think my friend was dabbling in witchcraft, got caught up in some that was a bit too much for him to handle, and died because of it? And is now, for some reason, a ghost who's causing all the accidents at the college?"

"Pretty much," Dean replied with a careless shrug.

"And why would he be ghost?"

"Unfinished business, as cliché as that might sound," Sam supplied.

"Or, judging by what we've gathered so far, he's a vengeful spirit," added Dean in a matter-of-fact tone.

"They're created through violent and sudden deaths," Sam explained quickly to Lily, aware that Dean's bluntness would be abrasive to the young woman. "And, judging by what we found in his office, there's probably more keeping him here than just unfinished business or all those intense emotions."

"What do you mean, something's keeping him here?" Lily asked, the uncertainty in her voice betraying the fact that she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to know the answer.

Sam and Dean exchanged a glance, and it was Sam who explained. "We've dealt with witches before," he said. "A coven, actually, that was using some pretty heavy magic to get ahead in all kinds of things…and, by the time we got to them, to get revenge on each other. The book they were using was linked to a demon and –"

"Say _what_ now?" Lily sputtered.

Dean reached across the table for the Bulleit and poured two more shots, first one for Lily and then one into the glass held in his own hand. "Believe it, sister."

Lily shook her head, staring into the amber liquid. _One thing at a time, Lily,_ she told herself. "Okay, then." She took a deep breath and blew it out slowly before going on. "So why do you need his stuff, then?"

Dean sipped his bourbon and replied, "To send a spirit packing we need to salt and burn its remains, but Adrian was cremated – which means there's an object that he had in his possession as a human that his spirit is now attached to."

"Usually it's a treasured object or lifelong possession, but we think that whatever kind of witchcraft he was performing tied him to an object he would have used for spell casting," Sam told her.

"Why something like that, though, instead of something he'd had all his life?" Lily wanted to know.

"Because if the witchcraft has as much to do with his death as we believe," Dean explained, "the whole binding-to-an-object business was probably not his idea." _And neither was his death,_ he added silently.

Lily pondered this statement. "That coven you mentioned…do you think Adrian was like them?" she asked softly. She raised her brown eyes to look appealingly at each Winchester in turn. "You can give it to me straight," she added.

 _She catches on pretty quick,_ Dean thought, impressed. "We do," he told her firmly. "Quite honestly, what we found in his desk indicates high-level witchcraft and what we've learned about Adrian doesn't indicate that he knew enough about it to warrant that kind of spell casting pantry. What makes the most sense is that he was tapping into some demon power to swing the kind of mojo he needed to get all that good luck."

 _Adrian serving a demon._ The thought sent a chill down Lily's spine.

The kitchen ran the depth of the house on the ground floor, with one large window on the south side above the sink that looked down onto the drive, two smaller ones facing east on the wall above the breakfast nook, and a back door with a yet smaller window on the north wall heading out onto the back porch.

Lily walked over to the sink now, gazing through it to look down the front drive of dusty gravel that cut a grey line down to the darker asphalt of the road. The driveway widened several yards from the front steps into a semi-circle where the Matador stood next to her former car, a beat-up Camry from the early Nineties and bought third-hand from a friend. A Kentucky-board fence, once white but now beaten and weathered to a dingy shade of yellowish-grey, bordered the foot of the property until the tree lines on either side, the driveway, and the semi-circle in front of the house, continuing beside the house and right around to the end of the garden out back to separate the clover-filled acreage from the porch and yard. The gate at the foot of the driveway was closed, as it always was unless somebody was passing through, and looked like it was in need of a good sanding and a fresh coat of paint to combat the rust starting to stain it a dull brown.

She glanced down in to the sink at the dishes, hurriedly placed there earlier that morning after breakfast before she'd rushed out the door to get to the college on time. When she looked up to resume staring out the window to collect her thoughts, she saw him. Her knees went weak and she gripped the edge of the counter tightly, her breath hitching in her chest.

"What is it?" Dean asked immediately. She heard him leap up from his chair – heard the soft high-pitched click of a gun being cocked over the heavier thuds of his booted feet across the faded linoleum floor.

"Adrian," Lily croaked.

He was standing on the grass side of the fence where the gravel began to widen, staring directly back at her through the kitchen window. His eyes flicked down to the fence for a moment before flashing back up, and the look on his face was so terribly wrathful that Lily backed away from the sink. She felt the back of her right shoulder knock against Dean's left side and she instinctively shrunk into him, terrified of what she saw.

Sam came up behind her on her other side, his own gun halfway up as well. He stared out the window too, his brow knitted in a puzzled furrow. He'd seen Adrian's reaction to the fence and asked, "Why isn't he crossing the fence?"

Adrian's specter flickered and flashed before their eyes, and then he was gone.

Dean's green eyes observed all of this, narrowed and piercing, and his hunter's instinct twitched inside his gut. "Do you have a shovel?" he asked Lily suddenly, disarming his pistol and returning it to the small of his back.

"Yeah, in the lean-to just out back," Lily replied. "Why?"

A couple of minutes later she and Sam stood behind Dean as he stuck a spade into the half-foot of turf on the gravel side of the fence and began clearing away a strip of grass and dirt about a foot wide. A few inches down, he hit his paydirt.

"Iron," he said as he turned around to look at them.

Lily raised an eyebrow, but Sam's expression told her that _he_ knew exactly what Dean meant by that single word.

"Seriously?" Sam asked.

Dean nodded.

"But…why?" his brother wondered.

Dean looked at Lily. "On our way over, you mentioned this place was your uncle's, right?"

"Yeah." Lily's raised eyebrow lowered and met the other in an uncertain frown. "Why?"

They began walking back to the house, and as they climbed up the front porch steps Dean took a moment to lean the spade against the railing before coming up behind.

"What does iron have to do with this?" Lily inquired as they entered the house.

"Certain substances or materials can physically keep out or trap certain creatures." Dean shut the front door and locked it, his hunter's instincts kicking in and putting some of his actions of autopilot. "Salt and iron are particularly effective against a lot of them, especially spirits." He turned to Sam. "I bet it follows the entire fence line, maybe even under the gravel at the bottom of the drive," he mused. "Must not be any at the tree line, though, otherwise he would've appeared on the road."

"That's weird," Sam stated. "It's…intentional."

"No, really?" came Dean's sarcastic response.

Lily was piecing it all together in her mind. A band of iron drawn under the ground around the house – a ghost-proof fence, according to what the Winchesters were telling her about the properties of iron…

… _and salt._

"Can you shoot salt? Like, in a shotgun shell?" Lily asked suddenly as yet another part of her world – a world that, until now, she'd considered well-built and reasonably solid in spite of some minor family dramas – started crumbling around her.

They gaped at her.

"Uh, yeah, actually," Dean said. "That's what we do."

"Why?" asked Sam.

It took Lily a moment to reply. It was all flashing in front of her eyes again – locked doors, shotguns in the front closet, boxes of ammo next to cases of salt in the pantry, a line of iron around the property…and Uncle Pete's long absences explained simply as hunting or fishing trips.

" _Hunters,"_ Dean and Sam had called themselves during their brief explanation just a short while earlier.

"Oh, God," she murmured, feeling light-headed. The last thing she felt before the world went black was Dean's arms catching her before she hit the floor.

* * *

 _He doesn't like this – not one bit._

 _Why would she be keeping him out? Why would she be so frightened of him?_

 _He just wants to help._

* * *

Lily came around slowly, the darkness in her vision slowly fading and the bright blurs above her gradually coming into focus. Dean and Sam hovered over her, concern and puzzlement written on their faces as they observed.

"You okay?" Sam asked, helping her to sit up on the couch and handing her a glass of cool water.

She took it with a small but grateful smile and gulped the water down, relishing in the feeling of the liquid against the cottony interior of her mouth and throat. "How long was I out?"

"Just a few minutes." Dean, standing behind the couch and leaning on the back, now moved around to sit on its other end by her feet. "Feeling a bit overwhelmed, huh?" he asked, trying to be light.

Lily nodded, biting her lip as she thought for a moment. "I think my uncle was a hunter," she told them point-blank, then proceeded to tell them about the strange things she'd noticed around the house but, for unknown reasons, never bothered to question.

"You've lived here all summer and you haven't even tried to find keys for all these locked doors?" Dean asked incredulously when she was done.

Lily shrugged, a sheepish and wry smile playing on her lips. "I guess I'm just too curious about what's in my textbooks."

A gleam came into Dean's green eyes. "I say we find the keys and see what Uncle Pete got up to on his hunting trips," he suggested with a grin.

"He sounds a lot like Bobby," Sam added.

As they searched the ground floor for a ring of keys that would match the old-fashioned locks on every door in the house, Sam and Dean told Lily about Bobby Singer.

"He does sound a lot like Uncle Pete," she laughed as she shut another desk drawer. She leaned on it and sighed. They'd looked in every possible place by now and there were no other drawers, jars, or cans to check.

She walked from the desk back to the fireplace, even though she already knew none of the boxes on the mantelpiece had what they were looking for.

"Wait, wait," Sam said, holding up a hand for quiet. Dean stopped rooting around in the kitchen and came out, and Lily looked over her shoulder at him. "Lily," Sam said, "could you walk back and forth across that spot on the floor?"

Still in perfect silence, Lily did as bidden – and now that she was listening for something, since that was obviously what Sam was doing, her ears picked up a change in the sound her boots made on the floor. On either side of the floor in front of the fireplace, her footfalls sounded solid; when she passedjn in front of the fireplace, they became hollow.

Sam joined her and dropped to his knees, his long fingers running over the floorboards. Lily backed up a few paces to where her footsteps did not thump and echo, watching Sam curiously. He soon located a peg in the floor – the house was so old that there were no nails anywhere in the wall-to-wall expanse of wood – that felt slightly depressed compared to the wood around it.

Sam looked up at Lily and Dean, now standing beside her, as he pressed the peg. The other end of the board flipped up and Sam peered into the cavity beneath it.

Lily bent over with her phone in hand, the flashlight function turned on to illuminate the empty space under the floorboards. In the middle of the space sat a small ornate box, so tarnished that at first Lily and Sam didn't notice it.

Sam reached in and extracted the box; Lily noticed the layer of dust outlining the spot where it had sat. Sam straightened up and they crowded close together as he flipped the lid open to reveal a ring of old-fashioned, tarnished metal keys.

He turned to Lily and held out the box. She gingerly picked up the heavy keys, her heart suddenly feeling just as weighed down as her hand by their appearance in her life.

"Well," she said softly, "I guess it's time to really meet my uncle, then."

* * *

 _Back at the college, he stands in the sunshine at the bottom of the stone walkway leading up to his beloved little theatre – a place at which he once spent more time than in his own home. Here, too, he is unable to go any closer. The hallowed bones and blessed foundation – the theatre's origins as a church – repel him in the same manner as the fence around her house._

 _At her house, he was only saddened and confused. But here, he feels a twinge of anger._


End file.
